ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

PRELIM COVERAGE

The accumulation and transfer of energy and nutrients allows living systems to exist.

ECOLOGY
The scientific study of relationships between organisms and their environment.
To understand ecology is to understand how nutrients and energy function in a system, and where
they come from, and where they go

MATTER
Everything that takes up space and has mass.
Matter exists in four distinct states, or phases—solid, liquid, gas, and plasma—which vary in energy
intensity and the arrangement of particles that make up the substance.
Matter consists of elements.

PLASMA
Occurs when matter is heated so intensely that electrons are released, and particles become
ionized (electrically charged).

CONSERVATION OF MATTER
Under ordinary circumstances, matter is neither created nor destroyed; rather, it is recycled over
and over again. Matter is transformed and combined in different ways, but it doesn’t disappear;
everything goes somewhere.
Explains how components of environmental systems are intricately connected.

ELEMENTS
Substances that cannot be broken down into simpler forms by ordinary chemical reactions.
Each of the 122 known elements (92 natural, plus 30 created under special conditions) has distinct
chemical characteristics. Just four elements—oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen—are
responsible for more than 96 percent of the mass of most living organisms.

ATOMS
Smallest particles that exhibit the characteristics of an element.
Atoms are composed of positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons, and electrically
neutral neutrons. Protons and neutrons, which have approximately the same mass, are clustered in
the nucleus in the center of the atom. Electrons, which are tiny in comparison to the other particles,
orbit the nucleus at the speed of light.

ATOMIC NUMBER
Characteristic number of protons per atom

ATOMIC MASS
The sum of protons and neutrons (each having a mass of about 1).
ISOTOPES
Forms of an element that differ in atomic mass
Some isotopes are unstable—that is, they spontaneously emit electromagnetic energy or subatomic
particles, or both. Radioactive waste and nuclear energy involve unstable isotopes of elements
such as uranium and plutonium.

COMPOUNDS
substances composed of different kinds of atoms

MOLECULE
A pair or group of atoms that can exist as a single unit
Some elements commonly occur as molecules, such as molecular oxygen or molecular nitrogen,
and some compounds can exist as molecules, such as glucose.
In contrast to these molecules, sodium chloride (NaCl, table salt) is a compound that cannot exist
as a single pair of atoms.